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David-Ngendo Tshimba

Mahmood Mamdani, the executive director of Makerere Institute of Social Research, is not an angel. And certainly the programme is not his fiefdom. MISR’s current mission takes seriously Frantz Fanon’s resolute plea to the African revolutionary intellectual to not simply revert to our world of yore - the pre-colonial, pre-modern, primordial, etc. - but to rethink it anew.

The continued misanalysis of mass violence in most of Africa by the ICC—perceived as simply criminal and not principally political—can only vindicate the harsh criticism against the ICC as indeed being an ‘International Caucasian Court’ deploying a Nuremberg-styled victor’s justice.

As a member of the petty bourgeoisie in the final decade of colonialism, Congo’s iconic independence leader Patrice Lumumba supported the idea of a Congolese-Belgian commonwealth in which Africans and Europeans shared common interests. It was only later that he abandoned this view and aggressively championed Congolese independence in the European framework of a nation-state.

Uncertainty hangs over the date of presidential and legislative elections, yet President Joseph Kabila’s term expires on 19 December 2016 and he is not eligible for re-election. The opposition rejects the possibility of Kabila continuing in office as elections are organized. But there is an alternative. The Congolese can forget about elections and instead imagine a different way of organizing their society away from liberal democracy.

If 1965 consists of the first time in recorded history of contemporary Burundi that people lost their lives simply because of who they were ‘ethnically’ considered to be, 2015 is yet another moment in the post-colonial history of Burundi that people are losing their lives simply because of who they are ‘politically’ considered to be.

Post-civil war Burundi faces steep challenges that remain unaddressed. History seems to be repeating itself after a decade of fragile, hard-won peace following the signing of the 2000 Arusha Accord. President Nkurunziza's departure alone will not heal the nation.